Mike's Mailbag: Why are there so many timeouts in college basketball?

Lauren Long / The Post-StandardSyracuse coach Jim Boeheim talks to the team during a timeout in the first half of a Big East game against St. John's on Jan. 12 at Madison Square Garden.

Televised college basketball games have too many breaks in the action. In the Monday night SU-Pitt game, SU takes a timeout at the 11:15 point in the second half, then the next dead ball, the under-12-minute TV timeout happens. Why have a second timeout in such a short span, except to plug for the obvious money paid by advertisers? Keep the flow of the game going! Let’s go back and see how college coaches manage a game, such as in high school, with a set total number of game timeouts.

— Jerry in Hamilton

I agree with you that there are too many breaks in the action in the college game. The media timeouts come at the first deadball situation after the 16-, 12-, 8- and 4-minute marks in each half. These are mandated stoppages.

Then each team receives five timeouts, but if a team doesn’t use one timeout in the first half, it only gets to carry over four into the second half. That’s a potential of 18 stoppages in play in a 40-minute game.

You’re not going to get the television networks and the advertisers to reduce the number of stoppages for media timeouts.

My solution to improve the flow of the game would be to limit a team to just two timeouts per half. If a team doesn’t use a timeout in the first half, then reward it with a third timeout in the second half.

My son got a No. 25 jersey on the clearance rack at the Dome shop. We saw from last year’s Post-Standard poster that it was Brandon Triche’s number last year. This year he is No. 20. We see some other numbers changed, but Rick Jackson is still the double 0. How do they assign jersey numbers?

— Cara in Taunton

The players generally get to pick their jersey numbers. Older players get first pick. That’s why Mookie Jones was No. 3 last year, but switched to No. 21 this year. Jones always wanted the number, but in his first two years, Arinze Onuaku had the No. 21 jersey.

Triche wore No. 25 last year because he assumed that No. 20 had been retired in honor of former Syracuse great Sherman Douglas. When Triche found out that Syracuse doesn’t actually retire the number (the school just honors the player by putting his jersey in the Dome’s rafters), he asked to wear the No. 20 that he had worn in high school.

I heard on the SU-Cincinnati game that the 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio and that Fab Melo is not eligible to play even though he is from Brazil. Did I miss something?

— Paul in Syracuse

Not sure why the announcers would say something like that because Melo is eligible to play for Brazil in any international competition, including the 2016 Olympics. I checked with Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins, who recruited Melo. There’s nothing that would prevent Melo from playing for his home country except that he’ll have to improve a lot. Brazil has a lot of really good players.